A Scandalous Enterprise
by AiyeshaPurple
Summary: Spock, an officer on the Enterprise, is teaching the infamous Kobayashi Maru course to the current Starfleet recruits. There he meets James Kirk, a human from Iowa. Spock feels a strange connection to the enigmatic Kirk, but nothing is as it seems...
1. Chapter 1

Part One: The First Sighting

Name: SPOCK 

Age: 26 

Gender: MALE 

Race: HALF VULCAN/HALF HUMAN

Planet of Origin: VULCAN

Points of Interest:  
-HIGHLY INTELLIGENT (GAINED FROM VULCAN FATHER), YET DECLINED TO ENTER THE VULCAN SCIENCE ACADEMY

-SON OF THE VULCAN AMBASSADOR, SAREK, HATED BY THE PREVIOUS' BROTHER FOR UNKNOWN REASONS

-ASSIGNED AS A SCIENCE OFFICER ON THE STAR SHIP ENTERPRISE

-GAY 

Spock stared down at the file held clutched in his hand. On the first page, the very first page, was the one word that could spell his down fall in Starfleet. Like the land bound military of the planetary forces, sexual preference was not discriminated against or, at least, it wasn't supposed to be. But bigotry and hatred had a way of rising to the surface in tense situations, which was every day for those involved in military operations. 

The file he held was a direct violation of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that still governed the armed forces, and was only in existence on the insistence of his uncle, who desired the whole world to know what a freak the little Humulcan was. Sarek was unaware of his brother's machinations, mainly because Spock had succeeded in hiding them from him for as long as they'd been going on, a period of time that stretched until Spock's declination of a position at the Vulcan Science Academy. Either way, the file he held was incriminating, and had to be augmented somehow.

Spock sat at the desk he'd been assigned for his temporary teaching job at Starfleet Academy, which would last until the Enterprise's next flight in two weeks. Drawing out the single sheet of white paper containing the damning appellation, he flipped it over and pressed it against the scanner. Moments later, the image appeared on the screen and Spock went to work with some judicious editing of any and all incriminating statements. When he was done, he reprinted the entire file, slipped it into the originals' folder, and cycled the original contents of the file through the shredder and incinerator. 

Standing, Spock glanced at his watch. It was nearing the time that his first class began, an instruction on the Kobayashi Maru simulator, which was one of his creations. He walked out into the hall, studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone in the corridors. Eye contact meant eventual conversation, which Spock would prefer to avoid. Far from being emotionless, Spock's human side granted him a depth of feeling that was unheard of for a Vulcan, and he used the Vulcan mask of emotionlessness to disguise his anxiousness in public situations. 

Upon approaching the door to the observation deck, Spock paused in front of the retina scanner and allowed the machine to verify his identity. When the scan finished, he pushed open the door and walked across the room to lean against the railing of the catwalk positioned above the "command deck" of the Kobayashi Maru simulator. Below him milled the members of this semesters "Failing Class", so named because of the no pass nature of the Kobayashi Maru test. 

One student stood out, a tall, blonde young man of no more than twenty-four. He was standing slightly apart from the rest of the crowd and was currently bent over some of the equipment strewed across the communications station. His hair was slightly shaggy and kept falling into his eyes, only to be pushed back by hands roughened by years of hard labor. He straightened from whatever it was he was investigating on the console and looked shrewdly around, examining the rest of his classmates with eyes that saw far more than they missed. 

Abruptly, he looked up, straight up and his eyes gazed directly into Spock's. Spock started, looking down at the pale green eyes of quite possibly the most handsome man he'd ever seen. Suppressing a flush, he stepped back from the rail, looking for an excuse to escape the notice of the sharp-eyed trainee. He caught sight of Ashakura, as she slipped onto the catwalk from the outside corridor. She held the class roster tightly in her hands and Spock moved towards her in a clear retreat, extending a hand for the list and trying to ignore the lingering burn of the blond man's gaze. 

Below the catwalk, the personage known as James Tiberius Kirk smiled. The instructor who'd been watching him had appeared flustered, even a bit embarrassed after James had met his eyes after feeling the weight of their gaze on his shoulders. He followed his progress across the space through the holes in the platform above, narrowing his green eyes speculatively. James could of sworn he'd seen a flash of…something in the austere instructors eyes, but whatever it was had been quickly buried under an icily expressionless mask.

The instructor walked back to the rail and glanced around the room before turning his attention to the list held in his hands. Looking back up from his paper, his eyes fixed momentarily on James, then shifted to somewhere on the opposite wall. Moments later, his voice rumbled out into the hall, saying, "Trainees and assistant instructors. I am Spock, a recent graduate of Starfleet Academy and the designer of the Kobayashi Maru test. I will be guiding you all through your experience with the simulator and grading you on your performance. Seeing as the test is un-passable, your grades will reflect other aspects of your performance.

"Each of you will eventually be put into a leadership position once over the next month. Your grade will be based on how well you handle this position I will now call the role and assign individuals to the 'crews' they will be a part of during the proctoring of this exam. Fukui Aido, Samuel Bosworth…" 

Spock's voice faded in James' mind as he continued to look up at the imposing man who would be their teacher for the next month. Not a conventionally handsome man, Spock was striking, his sharp cheekbones, lean face and thick hair combining in a deadly mix. Add the slightly alien tilt to his eyebrows and the pronounced point to his ears and Spock was enough to make heads turn. And that was only from the neck up. Factor in the rest and well….Spock was lucky he wasn't beating the girls off with sticks. 

"James Kirk. James Kirk. James Tiberius Kirk, if you are present, please make yourself known." The strident voice from above finally broke through James' reverie and he hurriedly said, "I'm here, Spock. Don't get your panties in a wad." Inwardly James winced. He hadn't to let that last bit slip out and, judging by the look on Spock's face, he hadn't appreciated the comment either. After staring at James for a few seconds, Spock transferred his attention back to the list in his hands. James leaned up against the wall at his back and searched through the crowd for the other members of his 'crew', aware of Spock's voice still rumbling in the background. 

Pavel Chekov, a pale and skinny Russian was standing by the CommCon that James had just recently vacated. Bones was leaning up against the wall opposite from him and nodded in confirmation when he met James' eyes. They'd met on the ship over from James's home of Iowa and become friends over the sounds of Bones' vomiting. Shifting his gaze, he found the short, whippy Asian man that must be Hikaru Sulu lounging in the previously vacant Captain's chair at the front of the room. Sitting on the dais below him was Nyota Uhura, a statuesque beauty with deep caramel skin that gleamed in the overhead lighting. Sequestered in the far corner of the room was the final member of their six man crew. A stocky Scotsman, Montgomery Scott was scanning the room, weighing the merits and flaws of every member, similar to James. His eyes flared when he saw James looking intently at him and he raised a hand for a grudging salute.

Hearing the end of Spock's speech, James snapped his attention back to the catwalk above him, catching the last fleeting seconds of Spock's gaze on him. Spock quickly looked away and James concluded that he must have been mistaken about the direction of Spock's gaze. Listening long enough to hear that his crew's rotation through the simulator was going to occur in the last week of testing, James began making his way towards the door. Reaching the door embedded into the wall of the classroom, he glanced back to find Spock's intense stare boring into him, breaking only when the door whooshed shut behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two: Further Encounters

Spock turned away from the now-closed door that obscured his view of Cadet Kirk and walked over to Ashakura, who had taken up position on the wall by the catwalk door. He handed over the attendance and "crew" assignment sheets, instructing her to input them in the computer and to bring the hard copies back to his office. That task finished, Spock walked out of the classroom and into the outside corridor. 

Though the new space was significantly less cramped than the one he had just left, Spock felt the need to leave, to _get out_, to escape the itchy prickling left under his skin by the regard of one sharp eyed cadet. He walked briskly out of the doors of Starfleet Academy and into the bright light of summer in Los Angeles. 

Shading his eyes, he walked towards the edge of the green that surrounded the front entrance to the EUSSA (Earth: United States; Starfleet Academy). Reaching the shady trees that bordered the lawn, he put his hand down and slipped into the gloom cast by the centuries old sequoias. Following a path that was little more than a line of dirt worn into the ground from the many times he'd been through here, Spock weaved in and out of the trees with a sense of purpose. 

He finally came upon a clearing containing a sturdy stone bench and a small pond. The arrangement was a remnant from the time that the land the EUSSA was on was a movie starlet's pleasure garden. After wiping off the leaves that had fallen since his last visit, Spock sat down on the bench, simultaneously pulling off the blue overshirt that marked him as a science officer on the _Enterprise_. 

Scrunching up his shirt in a small rebellion against his Vulcan heritage, Spock swiveled around on the bench and, after shoving the crumpled shirt under his head, laid down. Gazing up into the dappled light filtering through the leaves, Spock relaxed. Or at least he _tried_ to….A certain green-eyed stare continued to float in front of his eyes, causing him to tense up for no reason at all. Kirk was simply one more cadet in a cadre of cadets. He wasn't even the most handsome of them all, with his rough hands, shaggy hair and crooked nose. 

Spock jerked straight upright. _Crooked nose? When had he noticed Kirk had a crooked nose? As a matter of fact, when had he ever noticed anyone's features so extensively on first meeting them?_ This development was…unexpected, to say the least. He frowned. There were four weeks of classes in this session, half of which Spock would miss because of the _Enterprise_'s departure to the _Lule_ System two weeks in. 

He relaxed against the tree at his back. There was nothing to worry about. By the time Kirk was up for the _Kobayashi Maru_ simulator, Spock would be halfway across the universe. And until he left, he could easily avoid Kirk in the cavernous halls of the EUSSA. Satisfied and reassured by his logical conclusions, Spock lay back down on the bench and closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth of sunshine on his face. 

Unsurprisingly, he fell asleep in the peaceful quiet of the woods, surrounded be the green screen of verdant growth that blocked out the outside world and all its problems and prejudices. 

James leaned on the side of his bed, head held cradled in his hands. His pounding headache, left there by three hours of zero gravity training, then a sharp drop back into the Earth's natural gravitational pull, hadn't abated in any significant way, mainly because his neighbors were having a "study session". In the middle of the day. The banging was seriously getting on his last nerves. 

Groaning mutedly, he rolled over and stood up. Kirk stayed motionless for a moment, swaying a little from the rush of blood to his head, which caused his ever-present headache to pound harder, almost in tune with the rhythmic knocks from the adjoining room's walls. Grabbing a light jacket from the foot of his bed, James walked to the door, making a note to talk to the RA about soundproofing options. 

Heading towards the back of the dorm building, which was located ahead and a little to the left of the main EUSSA complex, James fixed his bleary eyes on the green blur that was the surrounding thicket of sequoias. Reaching the boundary between forest and lawn, he turned back for a moment and looked up at the dorm room windows, searching for…. 

Ah. There it was. In the top left-hand room of the structure fluttered an orange and green scrap of cloth. James grinned inwardly. It seemed like his plans for that night had been decided for him. Taking one last glance at the dorms, James turned back around and glided into the olive gloom of the woods, taking care not to make undue noise. He wandered through the semi-dark, weaving in and out of the trees, eyes fixed to the ground. 

When the light shifted, becoming brighter, clearer, James looked up and stopped dead. There, across the small pond that separated the two halves of the small clearing James had stumbled upon, lay Spock. Illuminated by the light of the dying sun, which added gilding to an already beautiful face, Spock was fast asleep on a bench by the calm shores of the pond. 

James shook his head, attempting to dispel the haze that had descended upon glimpsing Spock's supine form. Wincing from rattling his already aching head, he backed up, intending to fade back into the surrounding forest. His first step back, however, proved to be his downfall. With the loud snap of a cracking stick still echoing through the trees, James looked slowly upward to find Spock staring at him in the deepening gloom, blaster held loosely in his hand. 

"Uh," he said, frantically searching for a way out of this predicament. "I'll just be going now. Yup, on my way, not staying, no, not me..." He trailed off. _You're babbling, James. Babbling! To a teacher. A teacher who makes me feel…odd…_James stopped, both thinking and speaking and looked down. A slight heat crawled over the back of his neck and spread to the tips of his ears. He thanked the Gods and anyone else who was listening for the ever increasing shadows. 

Peeking up through his bangs, James saw that Spock had put down the blaster and picked the lumpy ball that had served as his pillow. He shook it out, revealing the slightly wrinkled form of his blue overshirt. Spock pulled it on, smoothed out the slight wrinkles and began walking around the shore of the pond in Kirk's direction. When he reached Kirk, Spock simply looked down at him for a long moment, his dark eyes glinting in the half light. 

He then left silently the way Kirk had come, sliding silently between the shadowed trees, leaving James silent and alone as complete darkness fell across the small clearing.


	3. Chapter 3

Part Three: A Chance Discovery

Spock slumped in his desk chair, shoving the paperwork he'd been doing to the side. He was more wound up than he had been before his nap in the woods. Seeing Kirk half in, half out of the fading light of day had awoken…_feelings_ he'd thought buried years ago. Having them rise up again was causing him no small amount of trouble, distracting him from both maintaining his façade and performing his duties to the _Enterprise _and her crew.

He straightened his back. There was only one way to deal with this…this _connection_ he felt. And that was to actually deal with it, instead of constantly pushing it down and ignoring it, as he'd done for so many years. Spock grimaced slightly. There was a reason he'd fallen into that habit, the reason being that he'd found that once he pulled his feelings out of their box, it was increasingly harder to stuff them back in. But this time there was no help for it, no way to avoid the cause of the upwelling of emotion. He couldn't even leave the planet.

Standing, he gathered his unfinished work into a neat pile, picked up his jacket from its place by the door, and left the room, the lights dimming as he exited. He closed and locked the office door behind him and retraced the steps he'd taken earlier that evening, still flustered by his encounter with Kirk in the forest behind the EUSSA. He felt his face heat slightly at the memory of Kirk speaking in that rich tenor voice of his, his green eyes glinting up at him through a curtain of blond hair. It'd taken all of Spock's willpower _not_ to say something to him, to keep walking as if being woken up by a golden farmboy was an everyday occurrence.

Now, hours later, he was still feeling the effects, even as unwelcome as they were. Add that to the problems earlier in the day, Spock was beginning to think he should have declined the temporary post at EUSSA, no matter how much he enjoyed watching cadets go through the _Kobayashi Maru_ simulator. Spock hit the main doors of the Academy and pushed through them in something of a hurry. Or, at least, as much of a hurry that a Vulcan could ever be in, even one who was half human. The brisk night wind hit him not long after and he swirled the coat in his hand around his shoulders, fitting his arms into the sleeves and shoving his exposed hands into the pockets.

Spock was so focused on the path in from of him and the turmoil in his heart that he almost missed the shadow slipping between the dormitory buildings. He saw a flash out of the corner of his eye and his head snapped up, sending his neat hair into a slight state of disarray. The flash came again at the side door of the cadets' dorm, as a sliver of light spilled out onto the manicured lawn. Spock caught a glimpse of shaggy golden hair and tanned skin before the door whispered shut, leaving the grass in darkness once more.

As illogical as it was, Spock's first thought was simply this: _Kirk_.

James Kirk stood on the other side of the side entrance to the South Dorm, breathing heavily. As he'd entered the building, he'd seen Spock on the path to the teachers' housing complex. He'd been standing stock still, his gaze trained on Kirk's face as he traversed those last few inches of doorway. At his _fully illuminated_ face. James cursed under his breath, his mind racing to cover all the possible outcomes of Spock's discovery, as innocent as it may seem on his end. For James, there was far more at stake than being caught sneaking into a dorm not his own. There were lives, and secrets he'd rather not reveal on the chopping block, and he was doing his damndest to keep the guillotine poised above it all from falling.

He pushed off the wall, his breathing normal again, and started towards the stairs, his destination the top floor. A minute or so later, James emerged from the stairwell and strode silently down the hallway, stopping at the last door. He knelt and shoved a thin slip of paper through the crack at the bottom of the door, his fingers briefly lit by the light that was still on in the room beyond. Kirk stood up again and waited for the footsteps currently pacing the dorm room to change their course and to approach the door.

When the clicks and snaps that indicated that the outdated locking system was being disengaged sounded, Kirk took a step back from the door, his hand instinctively going to his waist, to where his phaser normally sat. When the door opened, he grinned at the shadow who filled it and walked into the room, dropping into the desk chair situated along the right wall. He spun and faced Bones' back as he locked up the room again, waiting until he was done to say anything.

"So," Kirk drawled as Bones turned away from the door. "Did ya miss me?"

Bones snorted in derision as he settled himself onto the bed that was pushed against the far wall. "Miss you?" he said on a long breath. "Nah. Just got anxious when you didn't come on time. Thought you might've gotten caught, seeing as you've never had to deal with Starfleet quality security before." It was James' turn to snort at the Southerners comment. He may've grown up in the back of beyond in the cornfields of Iowa, but he knew his way around electronics. He had his father to thank for that. His father was also responsible for his current presence at the Academy, but that was a whole different matter, a matter that he and Bones were meeting to discuss tonight.

"I couldn't find any evidence of what we're looking for," Kirk said, suddenly getting serious. "In fact, I couldn't find anything, anywhere that even hinted at Sakej being involved in anything other than his work at the Vulcan Science Academy and his brothers Ambassadorial career." Bones blinked in surprise at Kirk's statement. James felt very much the same way.

"But that's impossible," Bones stated flatly. "They sent us here for a reason. They wouldn't have done that if there was nothing to find. Unless…that's the problem. They can't find anything because Sakej has gotten rid of all of the evidence. But why would they think we could get something that they, with all their resources, couldn't?"

Kirk lifted a brow at the question, considering the question Bones had thrown at him. For all of his charm, the Southerner had a sharp mind hidden behind the lazy drawl, and it was at times like these when Kirk was reminded all over again why the Agency'd sent a man who hated space with a passion to work with him on this one. For his mind.

"They obviously want us in Starfleet for some reason, though I can't figure out why. Al we're going to be here for is the _Kobayashi Maru_ test," Kirk said finally.

"Do you think that pointy-eared bastard has something to do with it? He's Vulcan, Sakej is Vulcan, and they share the common thread of the Ambassador. They could be in on it together," Bones pointed out as he shifted from sitting on the bed to lying on it.

Kirk felt a jolt near the pit of his stomach at the thought of Spock being involved with the likes of Sakej. "I don't think we should focus on Spock as anything other than a way to get the information we need, unless you have proof that he's involved?" Bones was silent, and James was relieved, but only slightly.

"Then I'll see you tomorrow?" Kirk asked.

Bones grunted and turned over. Kirk smiled slightly and slipped out of the room, making sure to turn off the light as he left.


End file.
